Friday, December 23, 2016

Silence

Silence’s Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto delivers one of the
most beautiful photographed films you could want and Thelma Schoonmaker cuts
the images together in her usual superb fashion.

The question is why
Writer/Director Martin Scorsese would want to make this hideous story of inhumanity?There doesn’t seem to be much point beyond making
an audience sit for 2 hours and 41 minutes of torture and mutilations of
Japanese Christians and Portuguese priests (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) by
a Buddhist Inquisitor (Issei Ogata) in the mid-1600s.

In truth, the religious fervor
of both sides is warped with the Japanese Christians' misunderstanding the
teachings of the priests, the priests’ misunderstanding of God’s relationship
to humankind and the Buddhists' misunderstanding of outsiders and the tenets of their own faith.

The Inquisitor described Japan as a swamp where nothing grows. This wasn't a 4DX screening, but I felt I was sitting in a swamp.To open a film like this
in the Holiday Season was a big mistake.It would have been better at Halloween.

For the technical and
acting aspects, I give Silence a 4.2 out of 5, but for
story and script, I give it a 2.8 out of 5, so a 3.5 overall.

About Me

Brian Porzak: I am a cinephile who likes to view films with a live audience. My taste runs the gamut, including indies, studio films, foreign films and most all genres. Because I see so many films, friends often ask me what to see. So, I thought I'd blog about what is worth seeing or not. As a writer/filmmaker myself, I hope to give a more uplifting perspective than the typical critic. Filmmaking is tremendously difficult. Just because some problems might exist in a particular work does not, necessarily, destroy its enjoyability and I think that is necessary to point out to would-be viewers.
See www.Aix-en-Film.com